Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was one of my پسندیدہ films as a kid. A classic film starring Gene Wilder filled with adventure and whimsy… We’re not talking about that one. The Tim برٹن remake, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which felt مزید drab but at least the visuals were nice… also not what we’re talking about, technically. The video game, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for PS2, published سے طرف کی Warner Bros. Interactive, who now own the Mortal Kombat license. Weird, mentioning Mortal Kombat in each مضمون thus far. The game was developed سے طرف کی High Voltage Software, who are still around today and worked on a portion of the Saints Row series, the modern Mortal Kombat games, and Zombieland: Double Tap as of recently. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory advertises itself as being able to explore the factory at your own leisure, so enjoying the factory myself as a kid, maybe it will be fun…. Yeah, I wish.



The عنوان screen looks promising, has a nice whimsical tone to it and the factory looks nice, but sadly, this is where the pleasantries come to a halt. Be it my scratched disc یا be it a part of all copies of the game, the game just dumps آپ into the world with no opening story یا nothing. I assumed that it was my disc just skipping it, but after the first level, آپ get a cutscene that shows Chapter 1 and then it goes to Chapter 2 in the اگلے cutscene, so I don’t know. The camera controls are hard inverted and go at an alarmingly fast rate, and they just make me feel ill. Speaking of ill, Charlie looks a little… malnourished. I know he’s poor and stuff, but he legit looks like he crawled out of Hiroshima after the bombs dropped. The game puts آپ into a long line and makes آپ walk down it trying to collect a single dollar, doing all sorts of wonky platforming on boxes and taking notice of collision glitches like giant snowballs clipping into the boxes. This is then followed up سے طرف کی a reasonably enjoyable section where آپ control Charlie as he slides down the road on a trash can lid, avoiding trucks and garbage cans. It’s short, basic, but enjoyable for what it is. But trust me, once آپ get to the factory, it’s all over. This is where the game shows just how boring it truly is.
The cutscenes have these characters looking really… deformed. Charlie looks fine, even if he has the black soulless eyes of a demon, but everyone else is so oddly detailed and they look kinda gross. Agustus looks like a whitewashed Fat Albert, Veruca’s big eyes piss me off, and آپ got Mike Teavee out here looking like fucking Johnny Test. But the most disgusting thing here are the Oompa-Loompas. They did this actor dirty. Their introduction is honestly horrifying. They run around at high speed all around Charlie with this distorted sound. It’s like something out of Predator. Once the game starts, آپ are tasked with collecting Oompa-Loompas to do tasks for آپ while آپ lead them. Think Pikmin but far مزید tedious. The Oompa-Loompas always take their sweet time to do the task آپ order the too and sometimes just run around for منٹ before finally finishing the task. And just آپ wait until آپ gotta make them collect fast running creatures that don’t make any sense existing in the factory, because that’s a real mess. آپ can stun the creatures سے طرف کی hitting them with Gobstoppers, yes, the candy آپ eat, but the lock on is so wonky that it will go all over the place before finally landing on the creature, and even then, it’s not a guarantee you’ll hit them. I didn’t realize I had to hit these things several times before I could advance to the اگلے level. I walked around the first area of the factory for thirty منٹ and ended up collecting all the collectables سے طرف کی accident before I realized what to do. But the سیکنڈ level is where I just gave up on this game. آپ gotta get Agustus out of the chocolate pipe, which looks مزید like he’s being grinded to a literal gooey mush with the bad animations and colors. To save him, آپ gotta close three vents, to do that, آپ gotta trap robots using جیلی beans (Please don’t ask). But the ball will never always hit the vents and آپ have to roll it at the vents because the vents are surrounded سے طرف کی sharp thorns. If آپ walk into them, آپ get hurt and knocked back out. But if the ball is already too far into the vines, آپ either gotta wait for the robot to leave the ball یا just kill yourself and reset the room. And Once آپ finally close the vents, آپ get to do it several مزید times. At that point, I had enough of this tedious mess and just quit.
I can only imagine how many children who enjoyed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory got this game only to get what feels like مزید of a chore than a game. I will give credit, the موسیقی is really well orchestrated and the idea of exploring the factory is a decent idea. I always loved exploring the worlds of characters from TV shows and movies, like the town of Halloween Town in the Nightmare Before Christmas game یا Bikini Bottom in any of the Spongebob games. Too bad the گھاس hurts my eyes in the factory. Those compliments don’t outway the mountain of tedium. So no matter what, the game is still a boring mess and آپ still spent money on this trash and despite giving the company your money for it, آپ get nothing! آپ lose! Good day, sir!